Firefox 3.6 Boosts Speed, Tabs, HTML 5 and CSS

Speed, Plug-In Enhancements, Easier Customization

January 21, 2010

By
Sean Michael Kerner

New Mozilla release adds new features to the open source browser.

Six months after the last big Firefox
release, Mozilla today is rolling out Firefox 3.6. The new browser,
which began its life under the codename "Namaroka", includes numerous enhancement over its
predecessor, Firefox 3.5.

Mozilla developers issued multiple alpha milestones, five beta releases
and two release candidates over the last six months on the road to today's
final release. Among the key enhancements in Firefox 3.6 are faster
performance, new HTML 5 features and improved customization.

"With this release, we're continuing to push on the things that we think
are important for Web browsers that are built for the way people actually
use the Web," Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla, told
InternetNews.com. "We want it to be customizable and we're obviously
working on speed and stability -- those are just constant drivers. We want
to make the Web browser the tool that people use to be productive."

Browser speed improvements

On the speed front, Firefox 3.6 is the fastest Web browser ever built by
Mozilla. Beltzner noted that on the Sunspider JavaScript performance test,
Firefox 3.6 clocked in at 20 percent faster than Firefox 3.5.

"We've actually done other things to speed up the browser as well,"
Beltzner said. "People often open a bunch of tabs at once at that will use a
lot of memory and processor power, so what we've done in Firefox 3.6 is
prioritize the tab that is in focus."

What that means is that instead of all the tabs receiving the same degree
of system resources, now with Firefox 3.6, the tab that the user is actually
viewing will get more system resources than other tabs -- rendering it more
quickly for users as a result.

Firefox 3.6 also now includes support for asynchronous scripts, which
means that a script can identify itself as being able to run in the
background, enabling the rest of the page to render first.

"We've also made improvements to startup speed and in how pages render
that will make the browser feel faster than ever before," Beltzner said.

Enhancements for Firefox plug-ins

On the stability front, Beltzner noted that the cause of browser
instability and insecurity is often the fault of a browser plug-in. Popular
plug-ins like Adobe Flash and Apple QuickTime are updated regularly by their
respective vendors, though not all users are aware that the updates are
available.

With Firefox 3.6, Mozilla has integrated a plug-in check to help users easily identify when they have an
out-of-date plug-in that needs to be updated.

Customizing how Firefox looks has now also become easier, thanks to the
integration of the Personas
add-on directly into Firefox 3.6. With Personas, users can change the
way Firefox looks without restarting the browser.